Apartheid Spies and the Revolutionary Underground By William Keniston

ISBN: 9781776149018

Wits University Press, 1 November 2024

Paperback, 368 pages 

An in-depth study of the assassination of Jeanette and Katryn Schoon at the hand of apartheid spy, Craig Williamson, that explores how the lives of a group of white activists intersected with and were impacted by the undercover security police and their operations both within and outside of South Africa.

This is the first book-length account of the assassination of Jeanette and Katryn Schoon on 28 June 1984, ordered by Craig Williamson, a member of the security service and apartheid spy. Jeanette Curtis Schoon and Craig Williamson first met in 1973 at Wits University. Schoon was part of a network of white activists fighting apartheid; Williamson had successfully infiltrated the student movement and rose within its ranks. He held positions of trust, first within the National Union of South African Students and later, after pretending to ‘flee’ the country, as an office-bearer of the International Universities Exchange Fund in Sweden, which helped fund many South African activists in exile. 

The book uncovers how the lives of a group of white activists intersected with and were impacted by the undercover security police and their operations both within and outside of South Africa in a multitude of ways. 

Williamson received amnesty for his role in the Schoons’ murder, among other crimes. This book shows the limits of the TRC process to deliver social justice and render healing from South Africa’s apartheid past. That justice has not been served to the Schoons remains a tragedy in this story of struggle against apartheid.